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Today I would like to write about a very exciting new and free science project for upper school and nature groups all around the UK called The Microverse.

You may not have thought about what a microbe is before, but there are millions - possibly billions - of different kinds. So why should we care? Well, firstly, most life on earth exists because of one group - the cyanobacteria. Then there are all those important ecosystem services that microbes provide. And remember the 'healthy bacteria' in your gut, which have been linked to all sorts of health benefits (or diseases, when things go wrong).

We now know that human activity is changing the world we see, but what is it doing to the world we can’t? Nobody really knows. There are many questions to answer about about the microbial diversity that can be found in urban environments in cities, towns and villages. What is microbial diversity like on concrete pavements and glass skyscrapers? How can they survive the temperature extremes, lack of nutrients and high levels of pollutants?

The Microverse project is asking schools and nature groups to take samples from buildings for analysis at the Natural History Museum in London. Are our cities a disaster for microbial diversity, or are there thriving, species-rich communities out there? Who knows? It’s a whole new world we’re entering. More information on the biology, science and activities in this Microverse clip.

I'm Anne Jungblut from the Botany Department. Join me as I head to Antarctica to study cyanobacterial diversity in ice-covered lakes of the Dry Valleys and Ross Island where already scientists on Scott's and Shakleton's expeditions made many discoveries.